


Odin Borsson and the Well of Mimir

by nimblermortal



Series: Before They Were Gods [4]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Canon Genderbending, Gen, Rabbits, Shapeshifting, weregild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 15:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Loki finally betrays Odin, Odin realizes that he's going to need a bit more than charisma to deal with having Loki around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rabbits

They sat together but across the fire from each other, silently roasting a bilgesnipe. The silence was unusual, but Odin was angry with Loki for using seidr for the hunt and had long since decided that the best way to punish him was by refusing to speak. Loki was retaliating by twisting words and letting them fall into the flames, where they burst in showers of sparks. Odin’s eye ticked, which was a sure sign of his irritation. Loki did not appear to notice, drawing a word from his eyebrows like a street magician. He was rolling it off the tips of his long fingers when Odin slapped his hand away.

“Stop that. You’re ruining the meat.”

“They’re only words, Odin,” Loki said. He rolled his eyes. “Seidr is so much fun with you around.”

“You shouldn’t be weaving it at all.”

“Are you becoming a prude as well as a hypocrite?” Odin didn’t answer, so Loki ran his hands through his hair. Odin watched warily, but only ginger strands came away in Loki’s fingers. These too went into the fire. A drop of fat fell from the bilgesnipe and sizzled in the flames below.

“You can’t do it, can you?” Loki asked. “I’ve never seen you play with seidr.”

“It’s not a toy.”

“As long as you say it like it isn’t,” Loki said, and stretched sideways so he could look at the sky, though his eyes would be too fire-blind to see any stars yet. Odin wondered if he saw something else in the spots his eyes made. He himself stayed where he was, hunched motionless over his knees. “Whyever did you make Embla and Ask in Midgard? You know my people want that land. They’ll be awfully cold.”

“They’re tougher than they look,” Odin said.

“Not tough enough,” Loki said, staring into the darkness. A moment later he made a quiet, unsettling huff of laughter, but offered no explanation.

“Are you angry with me for refusing to - _play_ with seidr?” Odin asked.

“Not at all,” Loki said. “Why would you?”

“You do. Though it is not right.” Loki shrugged and made no answer. “Perhaps we should make a trade, Muspellson. I teach you what I know, and you teach me what you know.”

“All that I know?”

“A trade. Trick for trick. It is a game of chance: whoever runs out first loses.”

“You are at a disadvantage. I make up my tricks.”

“Yes,” Odin said, and waited. “Well, Loki?”

“I am trying to sleep.”

“You haven’t eaten yet.”

“You eat incessantly. Carry on; I’d rather not be awake for it.”

Odin sighed and reached for the bilgesnipe, watching Loki all the while, but he did seem to be asleep. The meat was crisp and juicy and there was a whole carcass. Odin grumbled and ate his fill, then stretched out beside Loki. He threw an arm over the other man, but Loki wriggled out from beneath it and Odin slept cold.

In the morning, Loki had stirred the fire’s ashes alive and the bilgesnipe carcass was gone. Odin bit his tongue at Loki’s raised eyebrow and then, feeling bullied, asked after the carcass anyway.

“I disposed of it,” Loki said carelessly. “We’re traveling today; we could hardly take it with us.”

“You buried it?” Odin asked, choking at the waste, but Loki wouldn’t answer. He smiled his thin smile and coaxed the flames higher. At last, Odin asked instead, “Where are we going?”

“The isle where you learned seidr,” Loki said. “You were going to teach me - weren’t you?”

So they packed what little they had and set off again. Loki, as soon as the way became clear, turned into a raven and took the easy way above the trees, circling back to where Odin struggled and cackling.

“Turn into a horse and carry me,” Odin said. The raven gave a sarcastic caw and Odin bit his tongue. Loki was Loki, no matter what shape he wore.

“At least teach me that trick of yours,” Odin said, and the raven was silent. It did not turn into a boat or a sea serpent either when Odin reached the shore. He had to swim to the island, as he had done years ago.

He had left the island stepping boldly from wave to wave; but that was a seidrmadr’s game, a woman’s grace. He had learned seidr’s place since then, unlike some, and to rely on the strength in his own limbs.

The raven finally landed, heavily, on his shoulder when he reached the shore. It knocked the little breath he had out of him and then jumped down. Loki grinned at him from his fresh young face.

“I have had time to consider your offer,” Loki said, and though his words were grand, his face was still laughing at Odin’s efforts. “I think my request is the same as it has always been: teach me that trick of pushing.”

Odin had dodged that request before, wary of losing the upper hand, but now Loki had promised to teach him; so he showed Loki the webs in the trees and the ruins of Freyja’s loom and reminded him, as Loki stood impatiently, that seidr was a weaving, not a weapon.

“I know that,” said Loki. “I know it better than you.”

He did not listen when Odin showed him the spiders, and he did not listen when Odin taught him to twist the net. His web was loose and drifted; but Odin despaired of teaching him anything, and moved on instead of correcting him, tired of how his pupil rarely seemed to be listening to him on the odd occasion when he was standing still. Loki did not like to be told things; he lost interest in conversations he was not meant to interrupt.

Odin rewove the net and said quickly, “And then you fold in the ends and blow - so.”

“Oh,” said Loki. “It’s not pushing, it’s blowing. I never would have thought of that from you.” With a quick, fluid flick of his wrist he drew the strands of seidr into a fabric and blew. Odin blew like he was sounding a horn. Loki blew like he was calling a lover. He should not be seductive with his seidr, Odin thought peevishly. Buri knew what trouble would come of it.

His breath, his push were not as strong as Odin’s, but the seidr was woven more finely now. He would practice, Odin knew, and twist the seidr in his dangerous ways until it was unrecognizable; but when he did, his push would be like iron, like a club’s force, like - like the side of a heifer rising with its breathing as she slept beside her steer. It was obscene.

“Your turn,” Odin said, only to distract him. “Teach me that raven trick.”

“I never promised that,” Loki said. “I never promised you anything.”

“But I,” Odin said, racking his brains for a memory of Loki’s promise.

“You gave me that,” said Loki. “Who am I to refuse a gift?”

He loved tormenting people and Odin could see that, with Loki’s quick tongue, he was unlikely to win an argument. He wondered how he could win, because he was quite set on winning something from Loki now. He had tried silence, which only worked as a punishment, and seidr was unlikely to work any longer.

“Come, Loki,” he said, “haven’t you ever wanted a brother beside you on the wind?”

“I should hope not,” Loki said a beat too late. “All my brothers are bastards. And boring.”

“Is that why you travel with me? It’s not boring? Isn’t it boring to watch me slog along while you go so much faster?”

“I should think the last few days have proved that watching you slog is very entertaining indeed,” Loki said, and laughed like a raven. His eyes glinted with sparks that Odin weren’t entirely sure were metaphors.

“We made a bargain,” he said.

“Among my people, the terms of a bargain are a wager that you know more than the other,” Loki said.

“Your people are not my people!”

“No, and my people shall rule Midgard.”

Odin went suddenly still. “I think you have a very great say in whether that is true,” he said slowly, wondering if Loki had brought them to this subject intentionally. “Do you want Midgard to be theirs?”

Loki’s stillness mimicked Odin’s for a moment, and then he was in motion again. “How do you keep still when your face looks like that,” he murmured. “When you feel that shiver of delight rush up from the soles of your feet and into your spine like cold and electricity, when your vision goes bright and narrow as a sword as you recognize something, as you see the solution at last...”

He did not deny that Odin had found the solution. Neither did he say that this was a puzzle he had set for him. He looked up and his eyes were dark and still - his mother’s eyes, Odin would one day know, on a day his hands dripped with blood. He said nothing.

“I made Midgard,” Odin said. “I hewed it from Ymir’s corpse and his blood stained my hands as it did not stain my brothers'. I made it all that it is now with spear and seidr. I took the blasphemy of the first death and set it ringing with life, and when it rotted I turned even the maggots to glory. My brothers are buried there. You are right that I do not want to give it to your people.”

“You are right that I do not want to give it to them either.” Loki stood, his smile fierce, and held out his hand to Odin. The jolt that hit him when he took it was all Loki’s father. (Odin would learn that later too, before he saw Laufey’s eyes when his elbow was still jammed and buzzing from Farbauti’s strike.)

“Fly,” Loki said, and cannoned upward in a shower of feathers.

He could not be persuaded to do a thing slowly, unlike gentle Freyja. He would consent to repeat things once, twice, a hundred times for Odin, but the suggestion that he do so slowly was met with a scathing look and a demand that Odin look more closely. And he would explode again. He did not tire of this joke, not over the weeks of repetition it took for Odin to threaten to give up.

“Pay less attention to the part of you that looks like this,” he said then, gesturing at Odin, trying to give him just enough of a hint that he wouldn’t leave. “You are too emphatically yourself. All you are looking for is there, just behind that thing you make a barrier of.” And he switched through ten forms in quick succession. It did not seem to cost him any effort.

Odin remained stubbornly As. Loki was beginning to find this less delightful.

At last he said, “I have an idea to make it fit your ideals.” And he brewed Odin a potion and filled it with fresh green things and assured him that it would make him feel like a hare. It didn’t. It made him feel drunk.

“Hm,” said Loki, inspecting the empty bottle. He glanced at Odin and his frown turned into a smile. “I’m taller than you now.”

Odin wrinkled his nose. Loki was at least a meter taller than he was now, but that was no cause to gloat. If he had had the tongue for it, Odin might have gloated, but he had no way to communicate this except to twitch his ears irritably. Loki’s smile went softer and he turned into a hare alongside Odin. For weeks or months they ran together, speaking only in the postures of hare-language, Loki teaching Oin the ways of the hare, where it ran and hid and how it kicked with its strong legs.

It was when Loki got bored and changed to a fox - to the surprise of the fox trying to eat him - that they discovered Odin couldn’t change back. Loki was delighted. He gave a delighted foxy jump, and for weeks after that Odin dodged and hid, his hare heart racing, his thoughts poisonous. He could not convince the hare, though he proved it several times, that Loki would not hurt him if he caught him. (Dirty him, yes. Throw him about, yes. Break the occasional limb, yes - but nothing he couldn’t fix. Loki was as good at seidr as a fox as he was in any other shape, though Odin did not see how he could be.)

When Loki tired of the fox, he became a hawk. Or a mouse. Any sort of creature to play with his hapless friend, who could not escape him. The fox lasted less time than the hare, though, and each successive creature less, until Loki stared down at Odin and - well, perhaps it was the hare eyes, but Loki was not quite as Odin remembered him.

“Come along,” Loki said, and though human or Vanir or Aesir was a terrible shape for hunting, it was a wonderful one for seidr, from which Odin could not hide. Loki caught him.

He spent ten years among the humans, fussed over and coddled as Loki’s special pet. It turned out he was a diminutive hare. Not a rabbit, just a runt hare. It was humiliating, and it took him ten years to figure out how to open the door of his hutch. Ten years of cosseting and watching cosseting, of watching women Loki had not taught seidr practice it anyway - though mercifully badly. He did not know what Loki did with himself. Herself. It took him until the babes he had met in arms were starting to remark on how old he wasn’t getting to open the damn door.

Loki found him at once, of course. She said, “You are a very poor learner,” but she did nothing but follow when he hopped away up the hill. She sat down beside him when he stopped. Odin certainly felt old. He jumped when he felt her hand in his fur, but she did nothing but lay it there. Slowly he relaxed. It felt like Frigg’s hands, but much larger. He wanted to go home.

“I miss you,” she said, not looking at him. He did not know what it cost her to say so. Ten years of living among humans? More?

“Will you come back now?” she asked. “Are you puni...” she began, and stopped. She would not go that far. Her face twisted with anger instead, sharp, safe anger, patterns Odin recognized. “I’ll make you come back.”

The seidr ripped through Odin’s body and tore muscle from bone, forced them to stretch and grow, twisted his veins into knots and pulled until they tore free, wove new ones from the spewing tears. Loki could not feel this and change as joyfully as she did.

Odin was himself again. He was not in the habit of telling. He had never been in the habit of such cossets as he had endured. He reached over and cuffed the back of Loki’s head. “I should never have trusted you,” he said, his heart aching.

Loki scowled. As, male, both looked strange on him now. “I don’t know why you did,” he grumbled. “What brave adventure do you have planned now.”

“This way,” Odin said, though he hadn’t the slightest clue, and struck off. Loki followed, not questioning.

“I meant what I said,” she said, but Odin could no longer be bothered about little changes of sex. “You are a very poor learner.”

And yet, “Don’t cross me,” Odin said, and she didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Muspellson is not a kenning for Loki. Odin is referring to where he met Loki - I'm not sure he knows who Loki's parents are yet.


	2. Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If someone could let me know if this first paragraph is necessary, I will be much obliged.

It took them months to understand that Loki had not known Odin could not change back. Odin understood that at last; he did not know if Loki ever knew, or if she had intended to trap him. He did not enlighten her. He found a direction at last, and answered Loki’s questioning with more than an elusive smile.

“We are going to visit Mimir.”

“Why?” Loki asked, in tones of disbelief.

“I think it is time I learned wisdom.”

Loki rolled his eyes. He was slowly spending more time as a man in Odin’s presence. “Drinking out of a random fountain is not going to give you wisdom, Odin.”

“It is not a random fountain.”

“That you believe that proves you need wisdom.”

Odin did not wish to argue with Loki anymore, so he said nothing. Loki looked triumphant, and then irritated when he saw he had not won.

“Just because it’s at the bottom of Yggdrasil does not make it special. There’s a lot of water in the world, some of it was going to come up at Yggdrasil. So anything that falls into it turns white. That’s probably all it does, and that’s a fair enough reason not to drink it. Particularly for someone as form-vulnerable as you. Having white lips won’t kill you, but when people see that they will remember that you’re the fool who thought Ratatosk’s outhouse would make you wise...”

Loki kept talking. Odin let him. Sometimes he would wax eloquent and paint the words with his hands; sometimes he just talked. Odin tended to hope for the latter, which was at least entertaining, but either way, once he realized no one was paying attention the chatter would die down. They had a long way to go; let him entertain himself for now.

They walked a long way. Loki stopped talking. They walked farther, and came close to the base of the world tree. Loki said, much more quietly, “Mimir guards that well, you know. He will not let you drink from it easily.”

“I intend to pay him for the drink.”

“It will be the most expensive...” Loki rolled his eyes and trailed off. Odin had set a course, and he refused to be balked.

They had been down Yggdrasil before, often enough to know the paths, though not together. Both kept glancing at the other to offer a hand or direction and being surprised to find they knew where they were going, which rivulets in the bark would end or bend and which would give a solid path down to the roots. Both were surprised nonetheless: Loki was friends with Ratatosk. Odin was friends with Vedrfolnir.

At the bottom of the tree was the well, its stones white as the moon, and the roots that ran near it were bleached white as well. An old man sat near it, and Loki shied away from him, unwilling to confront age; but when he stood up, it was clear he was not old, but nearly as bleached as the stones and the roots from bathing in the well. Loki still did not come closer than his shying had brought him. Odin crossed and greeted Mimir as if they were friends, though Mimir did not return the good humor.

“I have come for a drink from your well,” Odin said. Mimir shook his head. “I will pay you. What would you like from me?”

Mimir stood a long time and stared at Odin. Odin did not fidget. Loki did the fidgeting for him, and tried to peel off a bit of the root he was standing near. It did not peel, and eventually the sounds of Nidhogg nearby made him stop.

“I have much treasure, and I can get more,” Odin said, and began to describe his hoard in terms a dwarf would have been proud of; but then, Odin had shaped the dwarves. Of maggots, if he were to be believed, though claiming the dwarves were a glory was a bit of a stretch.

“Your eye,” Mimir rasped.

“What?”

“The price is your eye.”

Odin did not answer. Mimir started to sit down again, and Loki turned to go; even Odin would not be - but, “No, you will have it,” said Odin, and fumbled for his knife. Even Mimir looked surprised.

“Odin, you cannot be serious!” Loki shouted, but they were under Yggdrasil and his words were swallowed. He watched as Odin slipped the thin blade into his own eye socket and popped the eye out whole, as if he felt nothing, and handed it to Mimir. He saw, though he doubted Odin did, that Mimir’s hand shook as he turned and walked to the well, and as he dipped his horn into it - perhaps that was why the eye tumbled out of his hand and into the water, where the iris and even the pupil turned white as it tumbled to the bottom. Loki stayed well away even as Mimir offered the horn to Odin. Odin, for all his bravery, for all he had never yet flinched as blood ran down his cheek, almost missed as he reached for the horn - but he took it gravely, and raised it to his lips, and drank. It seemed to take a very long time.

Mimir looked over Odin’s shoulder. “Do you want a drink as well?” he asked, mocking.

“No,” Loki said. “I think my life will be better served with two eyes than with all the knowledge in the world.”

“Your loss,” Mimir said.

“Odin’s loss,” said Loki, and Mimir nodded as Odin lowered the horn. He turned Odin about, but Odin came full circle.

“We are friends now,” he said to Mimir, who nodded again. “I will visit you, and we will eat together. We are friends now.”

“Yes,” Mimir said. “Go back to your friend,” and he turned Odin round again. This time, Odin came.

“Does that not burn like blazes?” Loki demanded, taking his arm. “You idiot, come on, I’ll have to guide you up the entire tree... Put a hand over it at least, by Aurgelmir, by Audhumla!”

“No,” Odin said, “not while he is watching,” so Loki turned about and yelled curses at Mimir, though it did him no good.

Odin seemed to know when Mimir stopped looking, or stopped being able to see, though, because he clapped his hands over his eye; or perhaps he simply did not care anymore. Loki felt the tug on the arm he used to guide Odin and glanced over.

“Did it do you any good, then?” he asked sharply. “Giving up your eye to an old vagrant.” There was much more venom in the word ‘old’ than in ‘vagrant’. The world was young; not many grew old in it.

“I think I have something yet to do here,” Odin said dizzily.

“You do not,” Loki said, and when Odin stopped in the middle of the path, he added, “Not now, please, you can come back, you fool.”

Odin walked on, but he walked slowly. At last he sat down and said he could go no further. Loki sighed and took hawk’s shape to fly to the nearest realm. When Odin woke the next morning, Loki had woven a bandage for him.

“Did you sleep?” Odin asked, but Loki just shoved the bandage at him and forged ahead. The next time Odin said he needed to stop, Loki was not there when he was ready to go on, and Odin realized he did not know which way to turn; so he stayed sat and waited for Loki to come back, and eventually fell asleep again. He woke to the cawing of ravens. There were three - three for a girl - but Loki was no girl, a woman at best. Odin frowned at him.

“I am sorry,” Loki said. “These are my weregild: they will fly for you and tell you what they see. Name them.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Odin said, frowning, but Loki would not leave, and neither would the birds.

“Name them so they can be free,” Loki pled, and Odin named them after what he did not have, and his thoughts flew far but not as far as his memories, and he could touch neither. They came back and whispered to him, but Huginn spoke of far-off lands and even Muninn could not make sense of his memories of the paths in Yggdrasil’s bark and branches. Loki watched stonily, and when Odin sat down, he disappeared again. Odin amused himself listening to the birds’ reports, trying to make sense of them. He did not move until Loki returned, and Loki greeted this decision with a scowl, which Odin could see if he pretended he was winking.

“I have brought you wolves, and I have -”

“Wolves?” Odin asked.

“They remind me of you,” said Loki. “I have trained them to guide you, but they will take other direction, for they are young and have much to learn.”

“How young, then?”

“They have not yet eaten,” said Loki. “They will take their first food from you.”

“Then they will be very hungry, for I am far from any sort of food,” Odin said. Loki shrugged. “Hungry you are, and ravenous,” Odin said, and they were; but they guided him up the paths after Loki and into the air of a realm.

In the air, Loki suddenly spun and threw himself at Odin’s feet. “I have paid the gild, only forgive me, father!” he cried and Odin, surprised, lay a hand on his neck, on the hair that grew there, as Loki had laid his hand on Odin’s back when it was all fur.

“There is nothing to forgive,” Odin said. “From you, there will never be anything to forgive.”

Loki stared at him from two perfect eyes, his whole perfect, ugly face intent on Odin. “You will regret saying that,” he said, as if he spoke prophecy, though he needed none.

“Let me regret it,” Odin said, and took his hand.


End file.
